Getting employees
on board for the
AI revolution
Companies are racing to operationalize gen AI,
but many haven’t addressed how AI-driven disruption
will impact employees — who aretorn between AI optimism and anxiety.

Part of Ivanti’s Digital Employee Experience series

Do your employees view
gen AI as friend or foe?
There’s plenty of excitement about the promise of AI to boost productivity,
drive growth and improve customer relationships. But what about the
impact of AI on your employees — and especially IT talent?

Ivanti’s research shows knowledge workers aren't fully bought into
the promise of advanced AI, despite its promise of decreasing
workloads for many professionals. Yet organizations can’t power
the AI revolution without employees on board as allies.

Ivanti surveyed over 8,000 office workers, IT professionals andorganizational leaders across the globe to uncover:

What do employees think

Are tech workers — who

What are the mostabout AI, both positive

are on the frontlines ofpromising use cases for AI

and negative?

AI disruption — fullyin the workplace and how

Are negative attitudes ainvested in the power

can organizations build anhindrance to adoption?

and promise of AI?

employee-centric vision
for generative AI?

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution2

Inside:Methodology
This report is based on two surveys conducted by Ivanti in the first half of 2023: Elevating the
Future of Everywhere Work and New Imperatives for Digital Employee Experience. In total, these01

The divided views on AI

02

Overcoming AI anxiety

two studies surveyed 16,200 executive leaders, IT professionals and office workers. For more
information about each study, visit ivanti.com/research

UK
16%

03

04

Germany
16%

IT and leadership misalignment

Build your generative AI roadmap

US
20%

France
16%

Japan
16%

Australia
16%This document is provided strictly as a guide. No guarantees can be provided or
expected. This document contains the confidential information and/or proprietaryproperty of Ivanti, Inc. and its affiliates (referred to collectively as “Ivanti”) and may
not be disclosed or copied without prior written consent of Ivanti.
Ivanti retains the right to make changes to this document or related productspecifications and descriptions, at any time, without notice. Ivanti makes no warranty
for the use of this document and assumes no responsibility for any errors that can

OfficeWorkers

IT
Professionals

Leadership
Executives

12,600

2,400

1,200

appear in the document, nor does it make a commitment to update the information
contained herein. For the most current product information, please visit ivanti.com

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

3

01

The divided views on AI
Organizations are racing to adopt new use cases
for AI, but their employees are divided about what
it all means for their work and careers.

Problem Today

Knowledge workers are 6x more likely to say
AI benefits employers, not employees.

Advanced AI is now being used successfully for a wideQ:range of enterprise applications — from helpdesk
chatbots that provide ready answers to employee

Do you think AI tools will primarily benefit
employers or employees in the future?

questions, to dynamic threat detection for security
teams. Yet Ivanti’s research clearly shows employees
are unsure about AI’s promise and potential. Our study
found just 1 in 10 knowledge workers say AI will deliver“high improvement” in productivity. And the less-than-56%

IT Workers

30%

7% 7%

positive outlook doesn’t stop there.
Workers also believe that generative AI is more likely
to benefit employers than employees. And can you
blame them? A report from Morgan Stanley found that
two-thirds of current jobs are vulnerable to inroads

Office workers

48%

from AI automation and that generative AI could

25%

8%

19%

replace up to one-fourth of current work.1

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Benefit employers
Benefit employers and employees equally
Benefit employees
Unsure1 Global Economics Analyst The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial
Intelligence on Economic Growth (Briggs/Kodnani) (key4biz.it)

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

5

Build your generative AI roadmap

Why It Matters
Organizations are depending on these AI-affected employees to reshape
their day-to-day work, streamline operations and drive revenue.
In other words, people are still the lynchpin to AI’s success.
That's why knowledge workers’ reluctance about AI should
be a warning bell for employers.
Research from McKinsey predicts that few so-called knowledge jobs

“There’s a lot of excitement about the value
generative AI could deliver to organizations, but
our research clearly shows that employees arequestioning who will benefit most. Organizations
shouldn’t shy away from this topic. We believe
employers need to be transparent about their AI
strategy in the short- and long-term and how futureplans may alter employee experiences/productivity
and their career progression.”

will be eliminated as a result of AI, but despite this assurance, it’s too
early to gauge the true impact.2 Even if AI doesn’t replace many
knowledge workers, it may still put downward pressure on wages.

Jeff Abbott
Chief Executive Officer at IvantiMorgan Stanley estimates that up to
300 million full-time jobs are in someway exposed to automation.3

2 The state of AI in 2023: Generative AI’s breakout year | McKinsey
3 Global Economics Analyst The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial
Intelligence on Economic Growth (Briggs/Kodnani) (key4biz.it)

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

6

Build your generative AI roadmap

Talk to employees about
AI workplace impacts
Explain how your organization will leverage advanced AI tools andhow these plans may impact employees. Offer them choices for learningand advancement.

Reskilling: some employees whose jobs are highly
affected by AI may want to develop new skills andpivot to a less affected role.

How to address youremployees’ fears about AI
Employers should craft a unifying vision for AI —AI upskilling: others, especially your IT talent, may

one that includes employees’ interests in the mix.

want to sharpen AI-specific skills and make AI tools a
co-pilot in their day-to-day work.

Pay special attention to your tech employees, many of whom are
doubtful that AI will have a positive impact on their careers. Explainthat gen AI will free them up to do more interesting work, such as

Tech-enabled growth: not all AI-inspired job changes

addressing complex threats.

require upskilling. For example, AI tools can allow awider range of employees to perform programming
tasks that previously required specialized knowledge.

Present retraining as an opportunity for employees to learn
new skills, accelerate their careers and/or pivot into new fields.

The underlying message for employees should be this: “AI may change
how you do your job, but we want to support and involve you along the way.”

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

7

Build your generative AI roadmap

02

Overcoming AI anxiety
AI anxiety is highest among IT workers —those hard-to-hire professionals who are tasked
with deploying AI across the organization.

Problem Today
Ivanti’s research shows tech workers areexperiencing high rates of burnout: nearly
1 in 3 IT professionals (31%) say at least one

IT workers say burnout, workload and deteriorating mental healthare the top three reasons they search for new jobs.

Q:

Why did you switch jobs in the last year? (Select all that apply.)colleague has quit due to burnout and 1 in
4 are considering leaving their current job
within six months.
When tech workers do decide to quit,
it’s not primarily because they’re lured toa higher paying job elsewhere. Ivanti’s
research shows issues like burnout,workload and deteriorating mental
health are the most powerful driversof disengagement and turnover.

I was able to get better pay/
benefits at another company

34%

My mental healthis suffering

31%

I don’t feel valued as abusiness partner

27%

I was burnt out becauseof an increased workload

25%

I was burnt out becauseof longer work hours

22%

My employer placed
unreasonable demands on me

22%

I didn’t feel connected
to my team22%

I didn’t feel engaged with thecompany values and culture22%

I am not satisfied with the techand tools my employer provides

22%

I was passed over
for a promotion

17%

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

9

Build your generative AI roadmap

Problem Today

AI anxiety is higher among IT talent

AI is supposed to remedy some of these stressors by reducing

How concerned are you about gen AI tools
like ChatGPT, Bard and Bing Chat taking
your job in the next five years?

Q:

workload and improving productivity, but our research shows anxiety
about generative AI may inadvertently add to IT workplace stress,
not lower it.

Is generative AI
adding to IT workers’ stress?

36%

56%

IT Workers

38%

Office workers

believe the AI revolution willthat gen AI tools like ChatGPT

benefit employers more thanwill take their jobs in the next

employees; just 7% say it

five years, 17 points higher

will benefit employees.

than other office workers.

36%

56%

0%

say they’re very concerned

26%

20%

25%

40%

60%

19%

80%

100%

Slightly or not at all concerned
Somewhat concerned
Very concerned

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

10

Build your generative AI roadmap

Risk reduction& mitigation

Knowledge
management

Anomaly/threat
detection

Leverage early security threat detection

Continuously collect, process and synthesize

and analytics to accelerate security

data to detect nascent threats. AI-powered

incident response times and improvesystems can gather and process massive

mean time to repair (MTTR). Generate

data sets from multiple sources — from

scripts to make the change in theinternal, structured data to external,

environment — or even automate theunstructured data — to help in threat

mitigation as it gets rolled out.

detection, prioritization and remediation.

Use AI to analyze individual, teamUse details from support tickets toand organization-wide skill sets.

automatically generate knowledge
base articles, providing guidance on
future issue resolution.

Employeeempowerment

How IT will benefit from AI
There are dozens of use cases for AI in IT and security.

Develop targeted recommendations for
personalized learning paths, increased
digital dexterity and independence.

Here are some of the most promising applications:Self-service
Let users answer questions
themselves with articles/tutorials
from your knowledge base or in theform of conversational, contextually
relevant responses in your user’s
native language.

Predictive IT
maintenanceAccelerated
resolutions

Employeesentiment
analysis:Analyze survey-based employee

Use contextual insights and historical

Equip service desk analysts with tools

feedback, ticket insights and telemetry

data for informed, proactive decision

to quantify the impact severity ofdata. Pinpoint attitudes about existing

making. For example, proactively

detected issues, better classify tickets

tech/apps, new tech deployments,

review performance data andand perform root cause analysis. All

service quality and satisfaction.

adjust parameters to define optimalof these improve first-call resolution

maintenance schedules, or optimize

rates and reduce costly escalations.

hardware refresh cycles.

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

11

Build your generative AI roadmap

“With so many more connected devices and employees
working in far-flung locations, the IT workload has
skyrocketed over the last five years. Gen AI and
automation are both very real antidotes to the problem
of IT overwork. Not only do they bring much-needed
relief to IT teams, who are chasing their tails trying tokeep up with the volume and diversity of issues; they alsodeliver excellent digital employee experiences — a win-win.”

Why It Matters
AI and automation can augment humans’ work
output — much like a highly informed and efficientco-pilot — and free up workers to do more thinking
work and less doing work.
This turnabout is particularly valuable for IT teams,
which have been overtaxed for years as they have
evolved to support the Everywhere Work movement.
Yet Ivanti’s research clearly shows IT workers struggle
to see and realize the benefits.

Bob Grazioli,
Chief Information Officer at IvantiGetting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

12

Build your generative AI roadmap

Not only that, tech workers reporttheir organizations are not yet
prioritizing AI and automation at theoperational level. In a list of strategic
IT priorities going into 2023, AI and
automation were ranked dead last.
Just 11% say they’re prioritizing AI
and machine learning, and 8% areprioritizing automation.4
At the macro level, it’s clear there’s
tremendous support for AI, but our
research shows it simply
hasn’t trickled down to the people
who are responsible for implementing
this tech revolution. And the longer anorganization delays, the farther theylag their industry peers.

IT priorities for 2023
Investments in automation and AI – solutions that could reduce theworkload for IT – rank last on the priority list.

47%

Cybersecurity

42%

IT infrastructure

30% Cloud27%

Simplification of the IT landscape25%

IT cost optimization

23%

Digital customer experience

22%

Remote work/collaboration

21%

Digital employee experience

14%

Recruiting / retaining IT talent

11%

AI/ML tools

8%

Automating repetitive tasks

4 Note: Since the survey was fielded in January 2023 shortly after thelaunch of ChatGPT, we expect AI prioritization has increased since that time.

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

13

Build your generative AI roadmap

03

IT and leadership misalignment
Leaders and IT professionals are not aligned abouthow (and whether) AI will reshape the workplace.
Without buy-in from IT, the AI agenda may be at risk.

Problem TodayEnterprise leaders and tech workers aren’t

CEOs can evangelize all the benefits of AI, but without
IT support, they will be slow to realize the gains.

aligned about the specifics of how AI will benefitQ:

the organization. Leaders are significantly more likely

What are the benefits of AI tools for your organization?

than tech workers to say AI will drive productivity
and automate mundane tasks. In other words,
they’re much more optimistic about the

Other / Not applicablepromise of AI.

No benefits

Why aren't tech professionals as enthusiastic?
For all the reasons we’ve laid out in this report: highlevels of stress, a fear that AI will poach their jobs

6%
9%
3%
3%
38%

High quality of productand concerns that generative AI will increase thebottom line at their expense.

47%
54%

Lowering costs

39%
38%

Reducing IT talent gap

Reducing headcount

20%
22%
50%

Automating mundane and routine work

62%

47%

Higher employee productivity

IT Worker

52%

C-SuiteGetting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

60%

15

Build your generative AI roadmap

Why It Matters
The average office worker learned about generative AI for the first time inearly 2023, but just months later, companies were already in a fierce battle toinvest, deploy and generate value.
IT professionals, who are doing the day-in and day-out work to operationalize AI
and automation, have valuable insights about how these advanced tools can beused in the workplace. They also understand better than most the challenges anorganization will face when deploying them. IT’s insights are based on hard-won
personal experience — both positive and negative.
Given all this, IT should have an active role setting the agenda for how
organizations will use AI — especially where it impacts IT operations andsecurity preparedness.

ChatGPT acquired 100 million users in justtwo months; compare that to Instagram,which took 2.5 years to do the same.

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

16

Build your generative AI roadmap

Three ways IT directly
benefits from AI-driven tools

Use cases for AI-powered DEX
Some of the most exciting AI implementations involve
rethinking and redesigning the employee experience.

Self-service solutions decrease ticket volume andtime to resolution, and free up the IT team to handle
higher-order tasks.

Use cases for IT professionals:

Self-healing solutions use remote monitoring and
AI-driven bots to resolve problems proactively.
(Why wait for a user to complain about a performance

Apply AI’s massive data-processing capabilities to help your IT team pinpoint
where to invest attention and resources, such as UX improvements, automation
opportunities or even testing new tech environments.

issue like application crashes when bots are ready toflag and automatically fix/self-heal those difficulties
for you?) Best of all, automatic resolutions aretracked and added to IT’s performance metrics andsatisfaction scores.

Use cases for employees:
Craft personalized digital experiences for employees, such as using avirtual assistant to answer IT questions or initiate a survey, a self-service

By analyzing wide swathes of data that werepreviously too siloed or unwieldy, AI can help detect

app to locate individualized employee benefits, or a learning roadmap thatrecommends highly personalized development opportunities.

patterns and correlations among IT events andincidents, analyze their probable causes and predictthe risk of any changes to the environment.

Without IT’s point of view on AI, leaders are setting an AI agenda with
only part of the picture. Even worse, they run the risk of choosing thewrong areas to focus on.

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

17

Build your generative AI roadmap

04

Build your generative AI roadmap
It's time to get serious about how your organization will leverage
gen AI. Get started by enlisting IT to lead your AI revolution.

1

Enlist IT to help define
your AI vision and agendaYour IT employees are on the frontlines of AI deployment; it stands to reason

Just as important, invite IT leaders tohave an active role in the AI conversation;for example:

they should be key collaborators — and even be among the first employees toexperience the benefits of AI.
To that end, take inventory of all the diverse ways your organization plans to

Adopting a detailed methodology
to evaluate new AI tech investments.

use AI and make sure IT ops gets high priority on a list of new AI investments(How IT will benefit from generative AI). This is the team you'll need tochampion your AI efforts!

Defining a governance structure
to evaluate AI risks, including
regulatory risk.

Advising about AI algorithms(i.e., ensuring they are reliable
and trustworthy).

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

19

Build your generative AI roadmap

2Document your AI
and automation strategy

Outline how AI and workplace automation can support your organization’s strategic
priorities, as well as which use cases you will embrace first. Designate a "tiger team" tolead these efforts and develop 12- and 24-month plans. Move quickly to secure early winsby deploying simpler/straightforward applications. Don't force the use of automation and
AI where it doesn't make sense.

Employees understandand support automation

Q:

Do you think automation isnecessary to be efficient at your job?
1%

Host “town hall” meetings to talk about your organization’s gen
AI strategy and get employees involved in shaping the agenda.

6%

45%

47%

Very necessary
Somewhat necessary
Not very/not at all necessary
UnsureGetting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

20

Build your generative AI roadmap

3

Design a code of AI ethics

Take inventory of known generative AI risks such as impacts on security,
bias, privacy and quality control. Design clear guardrails for how yourorganization will manage and mitigate these risks. When developing
guardrails for AI, everyone should be involved — from executives
to entry-level roles.

“Trust and ethics are essential in AI — and for many
populations, trust hasn’t been earned yet. The techindustry is in a race to build trustworthy AI becauseof the potential these powerful algorithms haveto solve strategic challenges. It is essential for allorganizations to take a thoughtful approach to AI
and demand accountability. Accountability for thedata they use. Accountability for the people using
AI. And accountability to ensure that models andalgorithms are unbiased, vetted and comprehensive.”

Srinivas Mukkamala,Chief Product Officer at IvantiGetting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

21

Build your generative AI roadmap

4Develop a strong AI-specifictalent development program

5

Monitor progress

It’s critical to keep tabs on how well AI and automation projects are meeting or
Identify the roles that will be most affected by AI and the skills

exceeding expectations. With each implementation, agree in advance on KPIs,

gaps that may emerge as the workplace transitions to using generative

project milestones and how quickly you expect to see results. IT leaders should also

AI tools more widely. Pay special attention to:

track metrics across all AI-related projects to understand common hurdles — all withan eye toward continuous improvement as you add more AI and automation tools toyour tech stack.

Critical talent groups:
Critical talent are those employees who are directly responsible
for your organization’s growth, innovation or competitive position.
Undertake a study that looks at how these individuals will beaffected by gen AI and what teams may need — whether throughhiring or skill-building — to ensure they operate at
max effectiveness.

Highly affected talent:
Identify the roles in your organization that are highly impacted by
gen AI — including employees who are at risk of being replaced by
AI. Survey these individuals to understand: are they willing to learn
new skills to work effectively with AI? Do they want to be retrained
and work in another department? Signal to all employees thatyou’re investing in people alongside the technology.

Getting employees on board for the AI revolution

The divided views on AI

Overcoming AI anxiety

IT and leadership misalignment

22

Build your generative AI roadmap

Getting employees
on board for the
AI revolution
Companies are racing to operationalize gen AI, butmany haven’t addressed how AI-driven disruption will
impact employees — who are torn between
AI optimism and anxiety.

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